There are great musicians.

And then there are great teachers.

Few people could reveal the beauty and brilliance of music like Leonard Bernstein. In this unforgettable explanation, he explores what makes Beethoven’s genius so timeless… showing that behind every masterpiece lies an extraordinary idea.

🎼 Leonard Bernstein on Ludwig van Beethoven

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Transcript

0:00 There is no aspect of Beethoven in which

0:02 you can say

0:03 Beethoven is great as a melodist,

0:07 harmonist, a contrapuntist,

0:10 a tone painter, his orchestration. You

0:13 can find fault with all of them. If you

0:14 take any one of these elements

0:16 separately,

0:17 you find nobody. There's nothing there.

0:20 He spent his whole life trying to write

0:21 a good fugue,

0:23 and he himself admitted he never

0:24 succeeded.

0:26 And as far as his orchestration is

0:28 concerned, you could have it. I mean,

0:29 that's

0:31 bad. It has trumpets sticking out all

0:34 over the place.

0:34 >> [music]

0:35 >> And it's sort of drowning out everybody

0:37 else. You can't really hear it. You have

0:39 to balance

0:41 the melodies go like that, and

0:44 you can't really say it's a great

0:45 melodist. And the harmonies

0:50 any child could write. And as for

0:53 harmonies, how many times do you have to

0:55 listen to them?

0:56 >> [music]

0:57 >> Pages of one chord over and over. It's

0:59 not very interesting.

1:00 >> It's too robotic, right?

1:01 >> Well, what makes it interesting?

1:03 It's the form. Well, form is the mold

1:07 that can be made to be very

1:09 uninteresting factor. But in Beethoven's

1:11 case, the form is all

1:13 because it is

1:17 a a case of what note succeeds every

1:20 other note. And in Beethoven's case, it

1:23 is always the right next note, as though

1:26 he had

1:27 some private telephone wire to heaven,

1:31 which told him what the next note had to

1:32 be. No composer ever had that, even

1:35 Mozart, to that degree, where everything

1:37 is so unpredictable and yet so right.

1:39 It's It all checks. It all works out.

1:42 You can rely on it. You know the next

1:43 note has to be the next note, and the

1:46 only next note that could come.

1:48 And that makes his form perfect.

1:51 How he had this, nobody knows, because

1:54 he struggled. He scratched out. He

1:57 He never left his rooms. He went crazy.

2:00 And he kept saying, "Well, I'm writing

2:02 only the tip of the iceberg

2:04 of what I really feel, what I could

2:05 really write."

2:07 His room was a mess. His food was

2:09 uneaten for 3 days. It was stale. A

2:12 chamber pot was unemptied

2:14 under his piano. It

2:16 He moved all the time. He couldn't find

2:18 a place that was right. He kept trying

2:20 If you look at those sketches, you see

2:23 the cross outs, you see the agonies that

2:25 this man went through.

2:28 And what has finally

2:30 appeared as the finished product looks

2:32 as though it was simply phoned in

2:35 from God.

2:37 That's what's so incredible.

2:39 But he wrecked himself in his whole life

2:41 trying to do this, trying to achieve

2:42 this very

2:44 inevitability. That's the word for it,

2:46 isn't it?

2:48 Every note that comes is inevitable.

2:50 Could have been no other note.